Journal of Child and Adolescent Behavior
Open Access

Research Article

Adolescent Ingestions Presenting to a Pediatric Emergency Department

Savithiri Ratnapalan^1* and Shafiqa Al Sharif²

¹Department of Paediatrics and Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Academic Educator, Centre for Faculty Development, University of Toronto, Canada and Division of, Emergency Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology, The Hospital for Sick Children, 555 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada

²Department of Pediatric, King Abdulaziz University Hospital, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

*Corresponding Author:

Savithiri Ratnapalan
Department of Paediatrics and Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Academic Educator, Centre for Faculty Development, University of Toronto
Canada and Division of, Emergency Medicine, Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology
The Hospital for Sick Children, 555 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X8, Canada
Tel: 416-813-7532
Fax: 416-813-5043
E-mail: savithiri.ratnapalan@sickkids.ca

Received Date: September 16, 2015 Accepted Date: October 02, 2015 Published Date: October 09, 2015

Citation: Ratnapalan S and Sharif AS (2015) Adolescent Ingestions Presenting to a Pediatric Emergency Department. J Child Adolesc Behav 3:250. doi:10.4172/2375-4494.1000250

Copyright: © 2015 Ratnapalan S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Objectives: To evaluate incidence, motives and clinical outcomes of pre-teens and adolescents presenting to a pediatric emergency department with substance ingestions. Methods: A retrospective chart review was conducted of patients aged 10 to 18 year department presenting with substance ingestion, overdose or poisoning to a tertiary care pediatric emergency between January1, -2009 to December 31,2010. Demographic information, type of ingestions, motives and outcome information were collected and analyzed. Results: One hundred patients with a mean age of 15 (STD deviation 2) years were seen during the study period (70 females and 30 males). Psychiatric conditions were present in 50% of the patients (n=50). The most common reason for ingestion was intentional attempted suicide (n=58) followed by intentional abuse (n=30), intentional misuse (n=5) and unintentional ingestions (n=7 of all the ingestions 39% (n=39) needed admission to hospital of whom 2 were admitted to the intensive care unit. Suspected suicides accounted for 92% of admissions. There were no deaths. Conclusions: Vigilance by parents and maintaining open communication with their children while monitoring for self-harm behaviors is important in adolescents age group. Health care professionals should check for mental illness and attempted suicide in adolescents who present with drug or substance ingestions.

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